Books and other literary materials are often stored or filed on a raise of shelving. A variety of bookends or book supports have heretofore been provided for laterally supporting books on a shelf. Typically, bookends have evolved as either heavy, end pieces whose very weight is sufficient to support a row of books in an upright position or as some form of lever structure which has a portion that underlies the books so that the weight of books at the end of a row will hold the remaining books in an upright position. Among these lever-type constructs is the commonly utilized bookend in the form of a metal, T-shaped support which has a base portion in the form of a tongue that is slide under the endmost group of books of a row of books and which has connected thereto an upright support which is perpendicular to the tongue. This upright support bears against the outside cover of the book in order to keep the endmost books from falling over, and thus each book, in turn, supports an adjacent book.
Several problems exists with the T-shaped bookend. For instance, if this bookend is not positioned squarely against the books, it is not able to support the row in an upright position. Thus, if a book is removed from a row of books, the bookend must be repositioned squarely against the endmost book, or the remaining books will tend to slide and tip the book end. Another problem experienced with this type of bookend is a problem referred to as "knifing". Knifing occurs when a book is carelessly reshelved and the exposed closed pages of the book are forced against the upright portion of the bookend. Since the upright support is relatively thin, the upright support will knife through the book and fold and even possibly tear the pages.
In response to the problems with T-shaped bookends, a clip-on bookend was developed and is subject of U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,838 issued May 4, 1982 to Cooke. In this structure, a clip-on bookend is provided that is an integral construction of two portions--a base portion and a book support portion. The base portion is formed with an integral resilient clip section for releasably securing the support portion to a book shelf. The support portion is in the form of a closed, loop-shaped structure having a flat bottom wall that rests on the top surface of the book shelf and front, rear and top sides which have lateral edges that can bear against a row of books. Accordingly, the book support portion of the clip-on bookend described in this patent has a substantial width in the direction of the width of the shelf in order to provide structural rigidity as well as to prevent knifing of the books. While it is possible that the clip-on bookends described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,838 can be used as book shelf dividers, that is, as a device adapted to be interpositioned between two books in order to separate those books for organizational purposes, the substantial width is inefficient and, where small objects, such as computer disks, are to be stored, the open region surrounded by the book support portion may allow the objects to fall therethrough or otherwise become skewed. Furthermore, although some open shelving system and some file cabinet systems provided divider panels, these panels are typically thin metal plates with limited adjustably since they mount only at specific attachment stations. Here, again, these dividers do not eliminate the knifing problem.
Accordingly, there is a need for a clip-on divider device which may mount to a shelf and serve not only as a bookend but also, if desired, as a divider between materials in a row. Further, there is a need for such a divider that is thin enough to have structural rigidity but which is wide enough to avoid the knifinq problem discussed above. There is still a further need for a clip-on divider that does not rely upon the weight of the materials approximate thereto in order to lateral support the row of materials.